This is an excerpt from Your Money, Your 20s, a concise ebook on building wealth. Read the full book here. “I’m just bad with money,” a friend said to me in 2007. At the time, I sat quietly and smiled to show my empathy. I didn’t agree but I also didn’t know how to respond. I knew she wasn’t bad with money. I just knew that she didn’t always act in ways that kept her bank balance healthy. Nearly 10 years later, I know that it’s not about being g [...]

In December 2015, I had been unemployed for two months. After five years of working in two corporations, I decided not to look for new employment when my fixed-term contract ended. I did what most people do when they ‘escape’ the corporate world, I went travelling. I had one month and one country, Japan. In a way, going to Japan was my way of going full circle. I was born in Japan but moved to England as a baby and grew up in the UK. I’ve spent m [...]

Quora is awesome. Like YouTube, one innocent click of a question can lead to hours of scrolling through responses and reading through other discussions on the same subject. One of the best aspects of Quora is that it gives everyone a chance to air their thoughts. Entrepreneurs, billionaires and your average Joe come together to help others make sense of their most pressing questions about life. Below I share my favourite advice from the last few [...]

Waking up early, finishing late, deciding what to eat for lunch, learning the ropes of your role and a paycheck. When you start your first full-time, permanent job you’ll experience all of these. But, there’s one experience that 20-somethings should be most excited about: earning compound interest. Compound interest occurs when, first, you earn interest on your savings and then earn interest on the interest you just earned. Similarly, when you ta [...]

For most people, weddings are staggeringly expensive. Of course, no one wants a crap wedding...so is it possible to tie the knot in style without breaking the bank? The answer is yes: Here is a guide to get you started, with a complete budget breakdown and loads of great tips. The following is a guest post by Urs Suess. He and his wife Gemma got married in the summer of 2016 for under $6000. The wedding occurred in the UK, and had about 60 guests [...]

Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus, The Minimalists, created the 'packing party' method as a way to help people figure out what possessions are essential. What is a packing party? A packing party involves packing up all of your possessions as if you're moving home. As you go about your routine, you gradually unpack items as you use them. By the end of a set period (e.g. a month, a season) you donate or sell what's left in the boxes. Why [...]

Why do we sometimes feel bad when our friends do well? Natural selection. Evolution. Feeling inadequate when one of our friends upgrades to a bigger house is just the start of our envy. In doing so, we’re participating in ‘keeping up with the Joneses’. Keeping up with the Joneses was first referred to in a comic in 1913 which depicts the social climbing McGinis family, who struggle to ‘keep up’ with their neighbours, the Joneses. Competition can [...]

As a child, I noticed that my parents dreaded bills. As a student, I noticed that my flatmates dreaded bills. As an adult, I still notice that people, whether rich or poor, dread bills. Like many of us, when we’re surrounded with a certain mindset, it becomes automatic to adopt it. It’s part of our natural desire to fit in. When I left home, I knew exactly how to respond to bills: I dreaded them. Why do we hate bills? Bills hurt for a number of r [...]

In 2015, I ran my first personal finance workshop, “Let’s Talk About Money” to a group of individuals who were looking to get out of debt, start building their savings and learn more about pensions. The workshop was an informal session held in a function room of a cafe in East London. The idea was to get people together to help them talk about money in a non-judgemental environment, but also to provide them with valuable insights from mine and my [...]

Banking online or by app has become the leading way to manage finances. New research from CACI for the BBA shows that customers moved £2.9 billion a week using banking apps in 2015 - up from £2 billion in 2014. It’s no surprise then that many of us have turned to apps to helps us manage and grow our savings. In the last decade, we’ve seen the rise of peer-to-peer lending involving 100% management of your investment online with platforms like Zopa [...]